open source Archives - Page 3 of 5

Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider & Open source software organizations and money

2 Comments / Books, open source, Would you do it again for free? / Stormy

The Starfish and the Spider compares two types of organizational structures. Spider organizations have a central command structure, like a CEO. If you detach one of the spider’s legs from the head, the leg can no longer function. It is not autonomous. Starfish organizations have very distributed command structures. Cut off a leg and it […]

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Does open source exclude high context cultures?

22 Comments / mozilla, open source, PlanetGNOME / Stormy

High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and

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Forking an open source project: regaining internal motivation

1 Comment / Business, open source, PlanetGNOME, Would you do it again for free? / Stormy

Can forking a free software project enable you to regain your internal motivation to work on a project? My current theory is that if you work on free software, then you get paid to work on it and then you get laid off, that you would work on a different project. Because the first one

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How do I raise enough money to work on my project full time?

10 Comments / Business, Career, gnome, open source, PlanetGNOME / Stormy

“How do I raise enough money to be able to spend all my time working on my favorite free software project?” is a question I hear often. I have a few ideas and I’m very interested in hearing others as I think the world would be a better place if we all could afford to

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Putting all the Hackfest pieces together

gnome, open source, PlanetGNOME / Stormy

Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an: organizer – someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen topic – what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish attendees – this is usually a particular group of people that work on a

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Words are important – just not always the way you think

1 Comment / open source, PlanetGNOME / Stormy

Recently I met someone who insisted on describing every department in his organization, all the acronyms and what they stood for. By the time he got around to describing how this whole thing related to me, he had lost my interest. (And I tried hard to hang in there!) He had given me too many

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10 skills to master to get things done online

3 Comments / Career, open source, PlanetGNOME, tech changing society / Stormy

I’ve recently watched a few people struggle to get things done in online projects. I’ve written and spoken on 12 tips for getting things done in the open source community but now I see that people also need to learn how to work with mailing lists and virtual teams. Skills you should master if you

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10 free apps I wish were open source

41 Comments / open source, PlanetGNOME, webapps / Stormy

When it comes to web applications, I think free and open source software fans are settling for “free” instead of looking for the freedom they would get from open source. Here are some free applications that I wish had open source software equivalents.Â I am not unhappy with these applications. I just wish I had

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How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

6 Comments / open source, PlanetGNOME, Travel, women / Stormy

In 2003 I gave a talk in Malaysia. What I noticed immediately is that my audience was well over half women. This was really noticeable because they were all wearing brightly colored hijabs. Usually I scan the room and count how many women I can find – usually on my fingers even in a room

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More Women in GNOME Now!

9 Comments / gnome, open source, women / Stormy

The GNOME community is extremely diverse when it comes to nationality. But we don’t have many women working on GNOME. We want to make sure that women interested in working on GNOME know they are welcome, so we have announced the GNOME Outreach Program for Women! The goal is to encourage women to participate in

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